Affiliate-selected Board seats/2016/Nominations/Leigh Thelmadatter/it
Nome:
- Leigh Ann Thelmadatter
Nome utente:
Domande per tutti i candidati; Domande per il singolo candidato che non si applicano ad altri candidati
Dichiarazione
Despite being an organization whose focus is education, we have yet to have anyone on the board who has made a career of teaching students in the classroom. Administrative experience is good, and I am forever grateful for the administrative support Wiki Learning has, but some of recent events are way too similar to what I have experienced as a teacher who uses technology. As I noted in Wikimedia-l, there is a huge disconnect between those that make software and similar technologies and end users. Despite decades of research and experience, in many ways, educational institutions, especially higher ed humanities, do not adapt to technology well, either rejecting it outright, or looking for a magical program/hardware that is going to solve all the department's problems. One problem is that programmers are as aware of what professors and students need about as much as we can code. The other problem, which I see both at universities and the WMF, is the tendency to run towards whatever technological fad exists, uncritically believing the hype and forgetting that technology serves the mission. So many universities have wasted millions of dollars only to find after the fact that what they bought did not fit their needs.
The priority of the Board and the future ED must be to keep the mission first, not to somehow keep up with the Silicon Valley Joneses. It also means that priority must be given to those whose work creates and maintains Wikipedia and other projects. People do not donate money for the WMF to create gadgets, they do it for free online information, and yes, that is primarily Wikipedia. I'm in favor of exploring new technologies to fit with this, especially finishing work on Visual Editor, which has just recently become good enough to be useful, but not perfect, and there needs to be a lot of standardization work done (e.g. making infoboxes tranferable to other language wikis for translation projects). None of this is glamourous work, but it needs to be done to avoid rot.
I am adding my name as an affiliates' candidate, even though I am not a member of a chapter or thematic group. I, however, am one of the founders of the user group Wiki Learning Tec de Monterrey, which is both an affiliate and an education program. Since our inception in 2011, we have been challenging assumptions about how educational professionals and students can/should participate in Wikimedia and the global Wikimedia community. I would like to continue to do this because we have only just begun to explore what user groups have to offer the movement, aside from being "proto-chapters" or "proto-thematic groups." User groups offer groups of people who are interested in contributing, but whose situation may not be condusive to chapter and user group status.
Curriculum vitae
Leigh Thelmadatter
Wikipediana dal 2007
Coinvolta in attività F2F di Wikimedia iniziando nel 2009. Il mio principale progetto è stato reclutare il Museo de Arte Popular in Wikipedia, inizialmente sotto GLAM, con il primo editathon messicano sotto Wikimedia México. Da allora fino al 2011 i miei interessi si sono spostati più verso il ruolo di Wikimedia nell'insegnamento.
Sono professoressa di inglese come seconda lingua (laurea magistrale in lettere dell'Univeristà dell'Arizona) presso l'Instituto Tecnológico y Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (Tec de Monterrey), l'università privata più grande di Messico che compete regolarmente con l'UNAM, una università pubblica, nelle classifiche per i finanziamenti. Abbiamo 32 sedi nella maggioranza delle zone del Messico, fatto che ci dà l'abilità unica di diffondere le attività di Wikimedia fuori da Città del Messico e le vicine città satellite.
Nel 2007 Impartii la prima classe presso il Tec di Monterrey (campus di Toluca) con l'ausilio di Wikipedia, prima che esistesse il programma Wikipedia Education, ma l'esperienza non fu ripetuta finché non fui al campus di Città di Messico.
2011 The first organization attempt occurred at Tec de Monterrey, with a student group. Started with 7 students.
2012 Wikimedia activities became an option for International Baccalaureate students seeking to fulfil Community, Action, Service hours. Presentation of our experimentation with this and work in classes, especially translation of articles at Wikimania in Washington DC.
2013 Wikimedia becomes an option for students needed to fulfil "servico social", community service hours requires of all undergraduate students in Mexico. Student participation grows to about 20+ per semester.
2013 The student group is reformed to a campus educational program for the sake of stability, headed by myself and Lourdes Epstein. Application to become a user group is begun. Under the name of Wiki Learning, the program gets the attention of Tec de Monterrey authorities at the main campus.
2013 to present - Wiki Learning gives presentations and training sessions to professors and others at conferences and workshops.
2015 Tec de Monterrey implements "Semana i" (I Week), a week set aside for students to dedicate themselves to a project instead of going to classes. Groups of students work with Wikimedia in March 2015 and September 2015, at three campuses, Mexico City, State of Mexico and Santa Fe. The next Semana i is scheduled for September 2016, which will have four groups doing distinct projects under four different professors.
This is not a traditional resume for good reason. I did not do all this work by myself and there is no way to separate what I have done from what my colleagues have. We have kept extensive documentation in Outreach wiki.
Ammissibilità
Wikimedia NYC si è offerta di supportare candidati degli affiliati «non tradizionali». Credo che un affiliato di un gruppo di utenti così attivo come il nostro dovrebbe avere almeno gli stessi diritti che hanno gli affiliati quali capitoli/organizzazioni tematiche molto meno attivi.
Sostegni
- Al meeting pubblico di Wikimedia NYC a marzo 2016, i presenti hanno preso parte a un voto aperto per sostenere la candidatura di Leigh in questa elezione. Questa strategia è parte della politica del nostro capitolo che mira a stimolare un processo più diversificato e trasparente per le elezioni al consiglio di WMF.--Pharos (talk) 17:40, 18 March 2016 (UTC)